The Flirt eBook

This isn’t a hysterical mood, or a fit of `exaltation’:
I have thought it all out and I know that I can live
up to it. You are the best thing that can ever
come into her life, and everything I can do shall be
to keep you there. I must be very, very careful
with her, for talk and advice do not influence her
much. You love her—­she has accepted
you, and it is beautiful for you both. It must
be kept beautiful. It has all become so clear
to me: You are just what she has always needed,
and if by any mischance she lost you I do not know
what would become——­”

“Good God!” cried Richard. He sprang
to his feet, and the heavy book fell with a muffled
crash upon the floor, sprawling open upon its face,
its leaves in disorder. He moved away from it,
staring at it in incredulous dismay. But he knew.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Memory, that drowsy custodian, had wakened slowly,
during this hour, beginning the process with fitful
gleams of semi-consciousness, then, irritated, searching
its pockets for the keys and dazedly exploring blind
passages; but now it flung wide open the gallery doors,
and there, in clear light, were the rows of painted
canvasses.

He remembered “that day” when he was waiting
for a car, and Laura Madison had stopped for a moment,
and then had gone on, saying she preferred to walk.
He remembered that after he got into the car he wondered
why he had not walked home with her; had thought himself
“slow” for not thinking of it in time to
do it. There had seemed something very “taking”
about her, as she stopped and spoke to him, something
enlivening and wholesome and sweet—­it had
struck him that Laura was a “very nice girl.”
He had never before noticed how really charming she
could look; in fact he had never thought much about
either of the Madison sisters, who had become “young
ladies” during his mourning for his brother.
And this pleasant image of Laura remained with him
for several days, until he decided that it might be
a delightful thing to spend an evening with her.
He had called, and he remembered, now, Cora’s
saying to him that he looked at her sometimes as if
he did not like her; he had been surprised and astonishingly
pleased to detect a mysterious feeling in her about
it.

He remembered that almost at once he had fallen in
love with Cora: she captivated him, enraptured
him, as she still did—­as she always would,
he felt, no matter how she treated him or what she
did to him. He did not analyze the process of
the captivation and enrapturement—­for love
is a mystery and cannot be analyzed. This is
so well known that even Richard Lindley knew it, and
did not try!

. . . Heartsick, he stared at the fallen book.
He was a man, and here was the proffered love of a
woman he did not want. There was a pathos in
the ledger; it seemed to grovel, sprawling and dishevelled
in the circle of lamp-light on the floor: it was
as if Laura herself lay pleading at his feet, and
he looked down upon her, compassionate but revolted.
He realized with astonishment from what a height she
had fallen, how greatly he had respected her, how
warmly liked her. What she now destroyed had been
more important than he had guessed.